Speak, and do it

Prof Javed Mughal
India was an abode of spiritualism but now it is not. It has snow-balled almost into a centre of rapes, molestations, robberies and murders. India was a golden sparrow but is now a begging bowl; India used to be a grove echoing with the soothing notes of doves and nightingales but it is now a crag of vultures and eagles with blood-smeared beaks; India used to be known for honesty and straightforwardness but now it is marked by moral turpitude, ethical erosion, and political debauchery. This country, contrary to the wishes and dreams of our ancestors, is pulsating in a state of almost dehumanisation, moral degradation and spiritual degeneration. It happens in the country of our dreams only because the aam aadmi has decided to remain helpless and mealy mouthed watching mutely all that is being done to him quite truculently. We, despite being well awake to all the melodrama of corruption and exploitation are tongue-tied and don’t attempt even a modicum to voice against it, don’t allow our hearts to feel it, close our eyes to all this non-sense and deafen our ears to listen to our own cries murmurs. We see our children committing suicides for justice but we don’t speak; we watch our properties being grabbed but we compromise; we watch our daughters and sisters suffocating for a little freedom to live honourably but we don’t not open our mouths, we see the marauders marauding publicly but we are too hypnotised to break our ice against it and so much so that we understand that our nation is being consumed by the leaping flames of hydra-headed problems but we cease to be the faithful sons of the soil. No, enough is enough. The time is ripe, when we have to decide to live respectably and motivate our conscience to speak against all these slapstick scenes and ugly sights. Hence lament, whine, and wail. Do it until it becomes a way of life. Do it until it does not even resemble the fading echo in a chamber. Do it until you are too bored to even add an abuse or two to your repeated protestation against the foibles and evils. Our country is in a mess. Our lives are pictures of hell, depicting blank faces in dark alleyways. The infrastructure is a pain, “things falling apart and the centre can not hold: the blood-doomed tide is loosed and everywhere; the ceremony of innocence is drowned.” The Govt. system of education is mind-numbingly inadequate while private sector of the same is too expensive for the majority of population. Inflation makes it hard to buy onion to run the house-hold and the petrol and diesel have become too cruel to allow the vehicles to ply on the roads. The job market is saturated; millions of graduates, post-graduates, professionals, produced every year, just beat their heads for respectable niche in the society. Many get to small and ignoble jobs; some of them get over aged and become frustrated and indulge into objectionable domain of activities and some of these evil-starred souls commit suicide. Houses are robbed, phones/cars are snatched at gunpoint, backs are stabbed, bullets enter bodies, hit-and-run incidents ruin families and properties are ‘ministers-mafia’-grabbed. The country is poorer every day and the few rich men enjoy luscious dinners at five-star and seven star hotels.. Politicians rob, lie, deceive but accuse others of the same.
The neighbouring countries treat us with scepticism and  Pakistan and China consider  us worse than guttersnipes. Pakistan, despite being nothing in her, treats us a sloth and threatens us at our door but we like a castrated He-buffalo do not move even a bit. China enters into our territory and hits our soldiers but we can’t do anything else than pacifying them with oily-words simply because we don’t have guts to rebut. Our Prime Minister goes to the USA and sit in front of Obama like some poor slave is at the service of his cruel master simply because we have a criminal conscience. Our black deeds and evil conscience don’t allow us to be too bold not to stand against our enemy. Enough already. We must decide to something about it now or be quiet forever. The issues are many, the solutions tricky. Before the skyscrapers are constructed, let’s focus on our tradition of building on wobbly foundations. With a hand on our heart and minds on high alert, let’s practice the art of speaking the truth, and else even at the cannon’s mouth. Politicians are corrupt. Simple: stop being a silent witness to their corrupt activities.
There is no law, no justice system to help the poor. What about quitting illegal things? How about you stop stealing, stabbing and killing your neighbour-you-can’t stand and the as-poor-as-you simpleton standing at a bus stop? The police torture you, the judge hands out an outrageous punishment and the jailer is your worst nightmare. Look around you: all these are your own people. The SP and the judge are not; but the policeman who beats you to an inch of your mal-nourished being, the sentry who extorts money for even a glass of clean water in your jail cell, the inmate who rapes you, the medical staff who false-report your injuries…these are all your own people. Stop being like them. Or bear it with an apathetic look on your weather-beaten face. Speak up or live with it.
You have to go for either of the two options. How many of you follow traffic rules? How many wear a seat belt, drive in the correct lane, do not overtake, give way and just generally do not drive like a banshee on crack? How many on a bicycle, motorcycle, rickshaw, pickup, truck, minibus, bus, truck, small car, luxury vehicle pedal, and drive as per the nationally recognised rules of road safety? Then why term the traffic to be a scene on an oil canvas; why blame the authorities for not streamlining it; why blame the others for not giving a damn? When was the last time you refused to move for the car coming from the wrong side, or not blame the woman-driver when she crashed into a motorcycle laden with five people coming toward her on a one-way narrow road, or shouted at a bunch of children strolling across traffic, midday, missing narrowly a speeding bus? Since you are the problem, knock some sense into your zombie brain and stop shifting blame. The city hospitals are too costly to be afforded by ninety percent Indians whereas most of the suburban hospitals and dispensaries are ill-equipped and some of them are even rat-infested and disease-riddled where the patient goes with a slight fever and come backs with the life-staking infection. The staff is inadequate for the patients; and even the doctors pass their mandatory hours at the state-run hospitals, misdiagnosing or under-diagnosing, only to saunter to their private clinics and hospitals where they shoddily supervise the privileged patients, managing to kill a few here and there. The number may be different, the attitude may be better enacted; doctors are not healers all the time for anyone. Rich people die in hospitals too. The change has to come from within; but no blood pressure soars if you demand thorough treatment, not breaking medicine bottles, but talking calmly. People who litter hospitals worse than their neighbour’s doorstep are amongst us. Stop them. Anyone who’s littering stop him. Not once, do it each time you see it. The rich are exempted from the law. Who made you the arbiter of that? Even if the person, living in Raj Bhavan or  in some other paramount palace breaks the law, arrest him. The day a police officer stops being scared of the ‘boss’ and performs his duty as per the law, a new order in the society will emanate blessing the humanity with a long-desired sigh of relief.
When you remain quiet, you become a part of the problem. This is not a C-grade Hollywood film where your head will be blown off if you speak up. It is merely your inner inertia, your apathy about oh-things-are already-so-bad and your resignation of ‘what-difference-one-person-can-make’? It is you who will change the scenario. Think about it. You have the power. It does not matter who you are, what the loss or gain would be. Speak and do it because it is the right thing to do. Speak and do because each action matters for it to become a collective narrative. Speak and do it because you owe it to the world around you, and to you. Do not exist like a cliché. Speak and do it because if you do not, you will be just a no-body who lived for nothing and died for nothing. Hence introspect, realise and do something now.

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